I’ve been away from the game for a while and haven’t been following the storyline much. I know the RL reason why McCree was name changed but what was storyline reason? All the searches I do just tell me about the lawsuit.
I’m pretty sure they’re just saying that he was Cassidy the whole time
I think Jesse McCree as a name was basically retconned entirely
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That kinda sucks. It could have been a good opportunity to add or deepen the characters lore a bit. I understand given the circumstances but still.
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It’s basically just been retconed to always have been Cassidy. And that’s totally understandable. Because if they had some in lore reason that he was using McCree as a cover name or something like people have been suggesting, you then have to go back to calling him McCree for all his time in Blackwatch/Deadlock, which the team obviously wouldn’t want to do as it would negate any reason for changing his name in the first place.
It sucks, but is sadly necessary.
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Honestly having an in-game reason for the change would have been all too easy to implent.
Went his whole live before OW2 as Jesse McCree.
But now that he needs to return to Overwatch he finally reveals that McCree was never his real name and tells everyone to call him by his actual name; Cole Cassidy.
They even had this voice line with Sombra teasing him about his name possible not being his real name.
whatever the reason for that was; it could have also been a nice transition into his new name and would have given us proof yet again that Sombra does seem to know everything.
honestly I don’t mind the retcon of the name so much (although I personally think it’s ridiculous to define it as an honorary tribute to a developer with real social condemnation even before a real court) … but that blizzard was extremely lazy in references that could edit in various online media. For example, the comics of the official website: why not edit them in a few simple photoshop steps? or the voicelines in game: in Retribution they preferred to completely cut the interactions that contained the words “Jesse McCree”. I don’t know if they restored them in OW2, but it was downright annoying not to have any mention of them.
Or you could choose names already very popular with the community, such as Joel or Logan (one of the primordial names of the character of the space cowboy for starcraft).
If you ask me if it was right to change the name … I don’t think so. A name is not a character. Let me give a concrete example: should all “cosby” families be ashamed of having called their children “bill” in the 80s-90s in honor of the actor who shocked the USA? or are they simply themselves and isn’t it the homonymy that upsets their entire existence? At some point even blizzard should have taken note of this maturity on the narrative and the “tag” that she has established with a character of hers. Denying him is only an indelible streisand effect. it is not the worst of crimes but … it is a further annoyance to us readers of the lore who are already largely ignored by true news and notions.
You’ve just pointed out exactly the reason why they didn’t do this.
Jesse McCree (the developer) is a very real person who did some very real bad things. If your goal in changing the characters name to avoid association with that person, including it in any capacity fails the objective and you might as well not have bothered because now you have to call him that in any media that take place pre-name change.
So unless you just never included him in any media that takes place before Overwatch 2, you need to call him McCree. And when you changed his name so you don’t have to call him that at all, it’s sort of self defeating.
This wasn’t a lore change for a lore reason. If it had been, then I would also expect a lore explanation. This was done to avoid him sharing a name with someone who has been accused of terrible things, and we can’t forget that.
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I understand that’s why they did it.
My point was simply made to provide a potential lore reason as many people still find it weird to call him Cassidy.
I mean to this very day you can go back and rewatch the animated short of blizzcon 2018 where they revealed Ashe.
And he is still called Jesse M. there.
I get they probably don’t want to devote time nor resources going back, do a quick re edit and voice over the name;
But for them going to the trouble of disassociating themselves with the McCree name but leaving it in, in OW related media, is bound to continue confusing people, especially new players.
If I’m not wrong his birth name is Cole Cassidy but when he founded Deadlock with Ashe he decided to go by Jesse McCree to run away from his past, and he stayed this way as he joined Blackwatch and as he left after the HQ explosion
It wasnt until he reunited with Ana and started gathering a crew of heroes for OW2 that he decided to drop his pseudonym and use his real name again. So in a way he’s McCree in Recall (OW1) and he’s Cassidy in The Second Crisis (OW2)
I’m not a fan of a necroposting over two months old, but… are you trying to “canonize” this tweet?
No, it’s just a rewrite that doesn’t allow for canonization. They just don’t want to invest resources to change media released in previous years (including editorial content and Reunion) and just black out everything in the game and bios on websites. Two special cases:
- Currently the game has censored ALL dialogue mentioning “Jesse McCree”, also eliminating multiple retribution interactions. They never made it back to 2022, will they do it in archives 2023?
- last year, Deadlock Rebels was released in the US under “McCree”, but in France this year it was released with the name changed to “Cassidy”, including the official book descriptions.
I think they did something similar in WoW a long time ago, and I’ll admit it bothered me a lot. today I resign that this version must be considered official, but we must admit the reality: Jesse McCree is no longer considered to have existed. And it is and will always be a very serious streisand effect for online tags.
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